Gros Louis faces budget issues in 2004

The New Year always brings resolutions involving weight, exercise or quitting a nasty habit. For Ken Gros Louis, however, the resolution is to end the year with a balanced budget.\nAs the New Year rang in, Gros Louis officially took over the role left by former IU-Bloomington Chancellor Sharon Brehm on an interim basis. Although the role as chancellor is not scheduled to be long-term for Gros Louis, that doesn't mean his short amount of time will be lacking crucial campus issues.\nThe issue that has been thrown to the forefront of IU operations lately has been the budget. With the state facing deficit issues of its own and funding for IU becoming a major question, IU will be forced to start assessing areas in which money can be saved.\n"With rare exceptions, every school is in a very tight financial situation and looking at a negative balance," Gros Louis said. "We are looking at ways of cutting costs. They will be postponing things until after July 1 that they were hoping to do this year. Also, a lot of faculty members are doing extra work in teaching an overload of courses."\nThe biggest hope from Gros Louis is that the state doesn't ask for money back from the university. IU, however, is not the only university being affected by state deficits. The Committee of Institutional Cooperation released in a recent report that schools throughout the Midwest are facing similar troubles, Gros Louis said. Schools such as the University of Minnesota have cut up to 15 percent of their budgets, which totals up to nearly 184 million dollars.\n"The improvement of the economy really depends on a better educated work force," Gros Louis said. "It is an irony that many Midwestern states are cutting their university budgets when it's the universities they look to to train the workforce which is going to improve the economy."\nIUSA President Casey Cox has been meeting with Gros Louis over the past few weeks and has devised an initiative to try and convince student groups to write Indiana Legislators to disprove the apathetic stereotype of college students. They also plan to establish a group of students to go to the capital and visit with different legislators and express their feelings on the lack of university funding.\n"As student leaders, we want to keep tuition as low as possible and we want the state to give us as much money as possible, but we also want to maintain our status as an excellent research university and allow the quality of our diploma to stay where it is at now," Cox said. "We want to try and find that median."\nNot everything for Gros Louis will revolve around the budget in the upcoming semester. In fact, the two goals that he has for the near future are simply getting caught up with what he missed over the past two years and working on the focal issues established by IU President Adam Herbert.\nHerbert has asked Gros Louis to take a look at salary policy and practices and make any recommendations. Gros Louis will also work with Vice President for Institutional Development and Student Affairs Charlie Nelms on IU-Bloomington's mission differentiation project, a part of Herbert's plan to establish mission statements for each IU campus. \nOther matters facing the chancellor in the near future include overseeing the review of the School of Continuing Studies and discussing the move of the School of Computer Science into the School of Informatics. Through it all, however, Gros Louis will maintain one major focal point during his term as interim chancellor.\n"I have always focused a lot on the students and interaction with the faculty, and I'll do that because I have always done it," he said. "They are probably the two most enjoyable parts of the job." \nThe next semester still boils down to facing the budget issue, and while Gros Louis will focus primarily on the Bloomington campus, Indiana Associate Commissioner for Research and Academic Affairs Ken Sauer said he feels Gros Louis can be a vital resource on and off the campus.\n"IU is not just getting somebody who only has a Bloomington perspective; I think by virtue of his position as Vice-President of Academic Affairs he has a very good knowledge of the IU system as well as our state system of higher education," Sauer said. "I think that is an important context to take into consideration."\nGros Louis will work very closely with Herbert during his tenure. The two will work on shaping the university for the future, and they hope to accomplish that by the time a permanent chancellor steps in, Gros Louis said.\n"I like the president very much, and we get along very well," Gros Louis said. "I am looking forward to working with him and helping him accomplish the things he wants to get done."\n-- Contact senior writer Brian Janosch at bjanosch@indiana.edu.